Individuation for Evolution
“CREATIVE INDIVIDUALS” ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO ADVANCES EVOLUTION' '' ' ------''' Personal INDIVIDUATION''' is the prerequisite for Cultural EVOLUTION ----- The one thing that we in the West seem to know about God, the Universal Force, All That Is, etc., is the fact that IT is creative and we are part of it. We also know that individuality, regardless if it comes with a Demanding Ego or a humble self, is the irrefutable prerequisite for being creative. This maybe the reason why, in our Chritianity-informed culture, we see God not as a nameless mysterious force as the Orient does, but as the creator, a person or individual. Maybe there is wisdom in our religion after all, which has created a ‘cultural consciousness’ that encurages and values individuality to such an extent that an explosive growth in human evolution has occured. This historical event is the ‘Western’ sientific and industrial revolution which is now being adapted by all other cultures. If evolutionary success can be seen as a measure of truth, then the process of individuation must be undstood as a universal concept for the development of conscious-beings, a necessary (ineluctable) step in the unfolding of this universe. The collective psyche or the ‘cultural unconscious’ and individuality are opposites of a true duality, the one cannot be thought of without knowing the other. ( http://www.msmisp.com/logos/foundation-for-evolutionary-spirituality.htm ) C.G. Jung reminds us that strict differentiation from the collective is essential for individuation. The reason for this is that individuation is a creative process and that a''' “'collective” of any kind has actually no creative potential, (as expressed by the saying: A camel is a horse designed by a committee.) It can therefore only be the personal unconscious, the shadow, which creates the ‘differentiation’ for the uniqueness of the individual. Edward C. Whitmont writes: “This brings us to the fundamental fact that the shadow is the door to our individuality. We know that Individuality and all Creations are tightly linked, because the first becomes the prerequisite for the second, which then impacts the culture as a whole. If one studies the lives of our great artists, writers and scientists, it is apparent that their creations are a part of their personality; that they created in their own image, so to speak. And when we study the many geniuses whose lives have been a painful struggle (Nietzsche, Van Gogh etc.) we realize that their creations are actually a part of the process of this struggle towards individuation, that for them, creations and the drive to individuate are one and the same process. ---- Fortunately, the process of individuation is not always that painful, but I believe that all creations are an overflow of this drive towards the wholeness of the individual. That “all of us tell our own story in live”, and that the difference between ‘us-ordinary-people‘ and the great geniuses is that their cup runneth over. And that it is the element of wholeness in the drive for individuation which benefits us all, because it creates individual solutions that have '''universal significance. That seems paradoxical, but so is life. In his book FIRE IN THE CRUCIBLE, The Self-Creation of Creativety and Genius, John Briggs calls it the drive for the individual-universal equation. If every life on Earth is a creative process, and I believe it is, complete success can never be guaranteed. By defination, ‘creating’ means bringing into excistence something completely new and unique, and if it were predictable, the outcome would already be known and could not be creation; not even for God. --- A ‘guaranteed creation’ is an oximoron. --- (The aboves include quotes on from several writers) ------- Rev_hwinter@windstream.net